‘Thor’ Opens with $25 Million Start at Friday Box-Office

I’m having a hard time figuring out what to call Thor‘s likely $65-70 million opening as that’s looking like the ceiling for the pic that opened to $25.7 million on Friday after $3.25 million from midnight showings.

Compared to previous openings for other heroes that will be involved in The Avengers when the likes of Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor team up you have a $98 million opening for Iron Man, a $128 million opening for Iron Man 2 and a $55 million opening for The Incredible Hulk. The idea Thor was a lesser known hero when it comes to public consciousness obviously plays a role, and like Bill mentioned in his “Is Thor the Next Iron Man or the Next Hulk?” editorial, Chris Hemsworth isn’t exactly a name that opens a movie when compared to Robert Downey Jr.

So what is it? Is $70 million a successful opening for a film that cost a reported $150 million to make before prints and advertising are taken into consideration? If you want to examine it even further, neither of the Iron Man films or Hulk had the advantage of inflated 3D prices. The other question is how high will it go?

When Fast and Furious opened in 2009 to $70 million it ended at $155 million. The same year 2012 opened to $65 million and ended at $166 million. Will Thor follow that path or will it manage the $200+ million mark?

Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com reports the CinemaScore for Thor was a B+ and skewed older. If my research is correct both Iron Man films scored an A with opening day audiences with Incredible Hulk scoring an A-. What does it all mean? Probably nothing, but it stokes conversation.

Fast Five scored $10.5 million on Friday after passing the $100 million mark earlier this week as it now sits at $117.8 million after just over a week. It will likely end the weekend around $33 million, down 61% from that massive, record-breaking $86 million opening.

Next are a pair of this week’s newcomers beginning with WB’s awful, awful, awful Something Borrowed, which took in an estimated $4.8 million, which should translate to about $13 million for the weekend. Jumping the Broom, which I missed but see received a much higher (yet still rotten) RottenTomatoes score than Something Borrowed, opened with an estimated $4.1 million. I’ve heard Mike Epps and DeRay Davis are pretty good in that flick. Any of you going?

The weekend’s other newcomer, but only in 22 theaters, is Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, which only brought in $30,000 on Friday. I have to wonder how far it will expand, because a potential $115,000 opening weekend and a $5,227 per theater average isn’t exactly kicking the doors down.

I’ve included the Friday top ten below and will be back tomorrow morning with a complete wrap up.

  1. Thor – $25.7 million
  2. Fast Five – $10.5 million
  3. Something Borrowed – $4.8 million
  4. Jumping the Broom – $4.1 million
  5. Rio – $2 million
  6. Water for Elephants – $1.7 million
  7. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family – $1.1 million
  8. Prom – $825,000
  9. Soul Surfer – $636,000
  10. Hoodwinked 2: Hood vs. Evil – $475,000

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